Anti-Machiavel

“Innocent Gentillet’s Anti-Machiavel, published in French in 1576 and Latin in 1577, was a very significant work and played a critical role in establishing the lasting misunderstanding about Niccolò Machiavelli as a supporter of autocratic, amoral, and dictatorial government. The English translation of the work by Simon Patericke published in 1602 is here updated with modern spelling and punctuation by Ryan Murtha. Murtha shows in a lengthy introduction and several appendices that Gentillet’s work was certainly read in early seventeenth-century England and that some of his ideas and prose can be found in the writings of figures such as William Shakespeare and Francis Bacon.”


—Mack Holt, Professor of History, George Mason University





"The evidence for Francis Bacon’s involvement in the creation, editing, and publication of the Shakespeare works becomes stronger every year and this book will add to it."


—Sir Mark Rylance, former artistic director, Shakespeare’s Globe, London